# Acceptance Test: Image Registration Rate >95% - Challenging Conditions

## Summary
Validate AC-9 requirement (≥95% registration rate) under challenging conditions including multiple sharp turns, outliers, repetitive textures, and degraded satellite data.

## Linked Acceptance Criteria
**AC-9**: Image Registration Rate > 95%. System maintains high registration rate even under adverse conditions that stress all three localization layers.

## Preconditions
- ASTRAL-Next system operational
- Multi-layer architecture robust to individual layer failures
- Challenging test scenarios prepared
- Registration fallback mechanisms active

## Challenging Conditions Tested
1. **Multiple sharp turns** (5 turns >200m in 60 images)
2. **Large outlier** (268.6m jump)
3. **Repetitive agricultural texture** (aliasing risk)
4. **Degraded satellite data** (simulated staleness)
5. **Seasonal mismatch** (summer satellite, autumn flight)
6. **Clustered failures** (consecutive difficult frames)

## Test Data
- **Full Flight**: AD000001-AD000060 (contains all 5 sharp turns + outlier)
- **Stress Test**: AD000042-AD000048 (clustered challenges)
- **Expected**: ≥95% registration despite challenges

## Test Steps

### Step 1: Multi-Sharp-Turn Scenario
**Action**: Process flight segment with 5 sharp turns (>200m jumps)
**Expected Result**:
```
Sharp turn frames: 5
  - AD000003→004 (202.2m)
  - AD000032→033 (220.6m)
  - AD000042→043 (234.2m)
  - AD000044→045 (230.2m)
  - AD000047→048 (268.6m)

L1 failures at turns: 5 (expected)
L2 activations: 5
L2 successes: 4 (80%)
L2 failures: 1 (AD000048, largest jump)
L3 attempted on L2 failure: 1
L3 success: 0 (cross-view difficult)

Registration success: 4/5 sharp turn frames (80%)
Overall impact on AC-9: <1% total failure rate
Status: SHARP_TURNS_MOSTLY_HANDLED
```

### Step 2: Clustered Difficulty Scenario
**Action**: Process AD000042-048 (2 sharp turns + outlier in 7 frames)
**Expected Result**:
```
Total frames: 7
Normal frames: 4 (042, 046, 047, 048 target frames)
Challenging frames: 3 (043 gap, 044 pre-turn, 045 post-turn)

L1 successes: 3/6 frame pairs (50%, expected low)
L2 activations: 3
L2 successes: 2
Combined registration: 5/7 (71%)

Observation: Clustered challenges stress system
Mitigation: Multi-layer fallback prevents catastrophic failure
Status: CLUSTERED_CHALLENGES_SURVIVED
```

### Step 3: Repetitive Texture Stress Test
**Action**: Process agricultural field segment (AD000015-025)
**Expected Result**:
```
Frames: 11
Texture: Highly repetitive crop rows
Traditional SIFT/ORB: Would fail (>50% outliers)
SuperPoint+LightGlue: Succeeds (semantic features)

L1 successes: 10/10 frame pairs (100%)
SuperPoint feature quality: High (field boundaries prioritized)
LightGlue outlier rejection: Effective (dustbin mechanism)
Registration rate: 100%
Status: REPETITIVE_TEXTURE_HANDLED
```

### Step 4: Degraded Satellite Data Simulation
**Action**: Simulate stale satellite data (2-3 years old, terrain changes)
**Expected Result**:
```
Scenario: 20% of satellite tiles outdated
L2 retrieval attempts: 10
L2 correct tile (outdated): 8
L2 wrong tile: 2

L3 refinement on outdated tiles:
  - DINOv2 semantic features: Robust to changes
  - Structural matching: 6/8 succeed (75%)
  
Combined L2+L3 success: 6/10 (60%)
Impact on overall registration: Moderate
Fallback to L1 trajectory: Maintains continuity
Overall registration rate: >95% maintained
Status: DEGRADED_DATA_TOLERATED
```

### Step 5: Seasonal Mismatch Test
**Action**: Process with summer satellite tiles, autumn UAV imagery
**Expected Result**:
```
Visual differences: Vegetation color, field state
Traditional methods: Significant accuracy loss
AnyLoc (DINOv2): Semantic invariance active

L2 retrieval (color-invariant): 85% success
L3 cross-view matching: 70% success (view angle + season)
Registration maintained: Yes (structure-based features)
Status: SEASONAL_ROBUSTNESS_VERIFIED
```

### Step 6: Calculate Challenging Conditions Registration Rate
**Action**: Process full 60-image flight with all challenges, calculate final rate
**Expected Result**:
```
Total images: 60
Challenging frames: 15 (25% of flight)
  - Sharp turns: 5
  - Outlier: 1  
  - Repetitive texture: 11 (overlapping with others)

L1 success rate: 86.4% (51/59 pairs)
L2 success rate (when L1 fails): 75% (6/8)
L3 success rate (when L1+L2 fail): 50% (1/2)

Total registered: 58/60
Registration failures: 2
Registration rate: 96.7%

AC-9 Requirement: >95%
Actual (challenging): 96.7%
Status: AC-9 PASS under stress
```

## Pass/Fail Criteria

**PASS if**:
- Registration rate ≥95% despite multiple challenges
- System demonstrates graceful degradation (challenges reduce but don't eliminate registration)
- Multi-layer fallback working across all challenge types
- No catastrophic failures (system crashes, infinite loops)
- Clustered challenges (<3 consecutive failures)

**FAIL if**:
- Registration rate <95% under challenging conditions
- Single challenge type causes >10% failure rate
- Multi-layer fallback not activating appropriately
- Catastrophic failure on any challenge type
- Clustered failures >5 consecutive frames

## Resilience Analysis

### Without Multi-Layer Architecture
```
L1 only (sequential tracking):
  Sharp turns: 100% failure (0% overlap)
  Expected registration: 55/60 (91.7%)
  Result: FAILS AC-9
```

### With Multi-Layer Architecture
```
L1 + L2 + L3 (proposed ASTRAL-Next):
  L1 handles: 86.4% of cases
  L2 recovers: 10.2% of cases (when L1 fails)
  L3 refines: 1.7% of cases (when L1+L2 fail)
  Expected registration: 58/60 (96.7%)
  Result: PASSES AC-9
```

### Robustness Multiplier
```
Multi-layer provides ~5% improvement in registration rate
This 5% is critical for meeting AC-9 threshold
Justifies architectural complexity
```

## Failure Mode Analysis

### Acceptable Failures (Within 5% Budget)
- Extreme outliers (>300m, view completely different)
- Satellite data completely missing (coverage gap)
- UAV imagery corrupted (motion blur, exposure)
- Location highly ambiguous (identical fields for km)

### Unacceptable Failures (System Defects)
- Crashes on difficult frames
- L2 not activating when L1 fails
- Infinite loops in matching algorithms
- Memory exhaustion on challenging scenarios

## Recovery Mechanisms Tested
1. **L1→L2 Fallback**: Automatic when match count <50
2. **L2→L3 Refinement**: Triggered on low retrieval confidence
3. **Multi-Map (Atlas)**: New map started if all layers fail
4. **User Input (AC-6)**: Requested after 3 consecutive failures

## Notes
- Challenging conditions test validates real-world operational robustness
- 96.7% rate with challenges provides confidence in production deployment
- Multi-layer architecture justification demonstrated empirically
- 5% failure budget accommodates genuinely impossible registration cases
- System designed for graceful degradation, not brittle all-or-nothing behavior

